I mean, really. Who can say that Microsoft Office is better than iWork, at least at this point? It has more to do with the fact that iWork is newer and so not quite as shackled than anything else - but like I said I don't think Microsoft is good at adapting.

Can't say I've heard of iWork, but I have found it better then anything I've used.

When XP was first released it was full of massive security issues and stability issues. Far worse then all of the issues people have with Vista. It's only around SP2 that it started to get very good. I still find it too unstable to this day, but mostly hate the terrible pause times the moment any heavy disk IO occurred.

I used to have to pause my music before I compiled my Java programs because it would cause the music to stutter. On the same hardware the issue does not occur under Vista.

And from that, I was not at all impressed. It's fine to say Windows 7 is nice, it does look pretty nice. But it's just dumb to say that Mac OS X sucks when you're talking about how nice Windows 7 is. Why? Because almost all of the features they're touting have been implemented (in a stable way) for years on Mac OS X. A summary:

Twice they talked about how great their instant search feature is. It's exactly the same as Spotlight on Mac OS X, which I've been using since early 2005.

Also twice they talked about easily connecting to printers in your network, which Apple has been calling Bonjour since 2002.

They bragged about how you could have slideshows in your desktop backgrounds, which I think has been around since the first version of Mac OS X.

They showed off being able to quickly go through music and movies on the machine in a pretty interface, which has been called Font Row on Mac OS X since 2005, not to mention that it comes with a remote control.

Ooh, parental controls. Not only is that silly to advertise because it is just so behind, but I've had that option in my system preferences window on Mac OS X for as long as I can remember.

I sort of can't believe that they tout the fact that you can finally get rid of a lot of those stupid notifications, but I guess that's necessary when trying to sell an OS to people who have been using Vista.

They also talk about how cool their window comparison junk is, which is simultaneously an Exposé (2003) and a Stacks (2007) copy. Also, it's still worse than the two, from what I can see.

Apple has been including "Recent Items" in the menu since Mac OS 9, and since Mac OS X was first released you could keep useful apps in the dock and tick click on them for various actions. In the video Windows shows this aged feature off as a great new thing.

IE8 will apparently have "web slices," which quickly shows a small portion of a page that has updated recently. I will admit, that's fairly nifty, but not altogether impressive.

Omigosh no way, Windows Live includes easy-to-use out-of-the-box photo browsing? Cool! Oh wait, I've had that in iLife since 2003, plus iPhoto existed outside of iLife since Mac OS X first came out, as did Preview.

The new DVR features I will admit are also cool, but I think it's fairly insane that they tout the fact that you can "pause, rewind, and fastforward" the recorded TV. Seriously? Is that a feature?

And while we're at old features, you should note that most of the stuff in Mac OS X is stuff that was already implemented at NeXT, Steve Jobs's company (in between being fired from Apple and re-hired at Apple), and that a lot of Mac OS X is basically re-engineered versions of NeXT features. NeXT started in 1985, by the way. Have a look at this for proof: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j02b8Fuz73A

Did I maybe make a point? Yes, Windows 7 has nice features, but they've almost all been done already, a long time ago. So, choose Windows if you want, that's fine, but don't tout it's awesome features as the reason why it's better than Mac OS X, because that just shows that you haven't actually tried Mac OS X. And if your reason is this: "I would NEVER EVER use a mac. They are terrible. Tehy try to control every little thing that you do. They are completely seperate from every other operating system." then I don't know exactly what you mean. I don't feel controlled. If you're talking about Steve Jobs being a **** and Apple being incredibly over-protective of their copyrights, then I agree that's over the top and not something I like. But none of it controls me. And I think Mac being "completely separate from every other operating system" is another unfounded thing to say, considering that Apple has significantly more bridge software to work with PCs than PC has ever had to work with Mac. That's not because Apple is awesome or anything, it's because they needed to do that for their own survival, but it still exists. Plus they made it very easy and very legal to install Windows on your Apple machines, and transferring between the two is also easy. So... what do you mean by that?

From reading your post Demonpants, essentially with Windows 7 I can have all the plusses of MacOS with all the millions apps for Windows! Awesome.

Edit: and on a PC that costs less then half the price.

Yeah except the features Windows 7 touts that have just been implemented in Windows 7 have been around on Mac for years. What do you think Apple has done in the meantime? Added new features, of course. Unlike Windows, Apple releases a major upgrade to their OS every year, all with a lot of new features. Snow Leopard is the only one so far that has been "minor," but it still has a good amount of changes. Wait 10 years and Windows will start bragging about how their OS is finally optimized for multicore systems, how you can write Chinese characters using the trackpad, use the graphics card for calculations, have 512x512 icons, etc. And that's just some of the stuff Snow Leopard added in, which is a minor update. Leopard has plenty more features that Windows still doesn't have, like an easy-to-use action automator program, instant network access to shared drives, wonderfully working virtual desktops, instant preview right in the file browser of videos, images, etc., I mean I could go on.

Win32/64 platforms: great for consumer and media but garbage for enterprise/stabilityUnix/Linux: great for enterprise/stability but crap for consumers unless special bundles for devices like netbooksOS X: a good mix of both but a heavy emphasis on media capabilities for general consumers and "pro-sumers"

Worst OS I have ever used? Vista. Hands down one of the worst OSs I can ever remember using. The OS actively tries to stop the user from doing anything to the settings, popups are DISGUSTING, crashes are frequent even on new installs, their graphic base desktop enhancements are a joke and performance hungry, backwards compatibility to Win98 it atrocious, etc. I have used every flavor of Windows that has ever been released, including ME and even the damn BOB interface, and Vista is just pathetic.

Hell, even Microsoft knows this. Remember the "Mojave Experiment"? This was an attempt to try and present a patched Vista to the public without the Vista name because consumers had such a bad taste in their mouths.

One last example of the stupidity of Vista. Windows Media Player is not an application that can be uninstalled without tremendous effort and pain. It is actually part of the OS. Ultimate stupidity.

Here's to hoping that Windows7 corrects a lot of the wrongs committed by Vista

Win32/64 platforms: great for consumer and media but garbage for enterprise/stabilityUnix/Linux: great for enterprise/stability but crap for consumers unless special bundles for devices like netbooks

I agree with everything, except this part. I think it depends a lot on which customers you're talking about.

Probably most of them don't do much more with it than surfing the internet and write email. Perhaps write a document or 2 and print something.

IMHO Linux caters for that much better than Windows:1) No viruses and such, so no need for anti-virus software subscriptions that expire and cost money2) The software you need is free3) More stability and performance4) And yes, even installing a printer is easier in Ubuntu than Windows these days

I guess Windows is better for:1) High-end gaming2) Music (Linux equivalents of software like Cubase, Logic and Reason are not quite there yet)3) ... and any other uses requiring specific software that doesn't exist in Linux4) Users that know Windows and are fine with it and are simply not interested in looking elsewhere.5) Perhaps users that fall between the tech-savvy and the non-techy catagories.

Some time ago I installed Ubuntu for a non-technical friend because I was fed up with her PC crashing all the time, viruses and whatnot. Because, you know, it's always nerds like us who are the unlucky bastards having to fix that crap .Anyway, she was up to speed in minutes and didn't have any problem since. So much for the old 'Windows is better for non-techy people' argument...

I remember beta testing BeOS. I was one of those early signups before it was "announced." It had some amazing concepts and fantastic implementations of them. Where they blew it was in their lack of development platforms. For the longest time there was only one compiler, and you had to pay through the teeth for it. I'm guessing (hoping) that's changed now with Haiku, but either way, I think their time in the spotlight is done.

Now, I used to test operating systems back in the day (even back when they were operating systems, and not whole environments). I can tell you, I have equal disdain for all of them... I haven't found a perfect one yet. They all get in your way in one way, shape, form, or another. I can go through and list just about every negative to every OS in existence, but instead, here's my wish list from my development point of view:

I wish Microsoft would relax their hyper knee-jerk reactions to security issues and get a bit more out of the way. UAC has made running and installing applications on Vista a pain in the butt for developers. If you want to be more secure, minimize all the stuff you integrate with the OS and build a solid architecture.

I wish Linux and Microsoft would take a queue from Apple and make easier installers. Apple has a great concept with their .app method for programs. It's easy for users to install and use, and even easier to cleanup. It's not perfect, but I think it's the best out there for desktop application packaging.

I wish Sun-Oracle would start treating Java with more respect as a development platform. Instead, they keep trying to throw it in the end-user's face with popups and messages that cheapen the applications that use it. Everything from "Hi, you're getting ready to run a crappy java app!" to "Oh, don't forget to install this crapware along with Java!"

I wish that Apple would get on the ball with Java. I appreciate their efforts to keep it clean and integrated with their OS, but their commitment to it feels fairly weak right now. Although I was thrilled to see the latest Java installed with Snow Leopard, I'm still stuck supporting Java 1.5 (or even 1.4) for any version of their OS before.

Hey, I actually have an original PowerPC dual processor BeBox - complete with Geek port... That was the hardware made be Be Inc. before they decided to go software only. Somebody gave it to me. I never was able to get it to boot up properly, but the hardware appears to function correctly.

Those were the days. Loved the Amiga of course - it was way ahead of it's time. The OS was easily ten years ahead of anything Microsoft did. If you compared platforms in the Amiga days you would wonder how it was that PCs survived at all (IBM's sales force, that's how).

BeOS was cool because (like OS X) they took the good bits from Unix and scrapped the crap (X windows). They had a very decent file system too as I recall. Specially compared with the crap of MS Windows which persists to this day - showing how far behind MS is... (short file names? drive letters? - still going for DOS compatibilty are they?)

Microsoft needs to stop dragging their feet and actually do that innovation that they pretend they are good at. Ditch drive letters. Provide a way to assign a drive letter to any folder as a work around for near-term backward compatibility. Ditch short file names - they were a tremendously stupid idea. Ditch COM - it was supposed to solve DLL hell, but it made it worse and then they went with all these "assemblies" and side-by-side hacks and application manifest torture. Dropping all that BS and going back to plain DLLs in the application's folder would make things so much better. They just have to not allow applications to downgrade system DLLs.

I agree that Apple got it right with Application Bundles - so simple and it works for 99.9% of applications out there. Anything else uses a standard package installer.

MS screwed up royally with their installer technology (MSI) - they had a cool concept that just has so many side effects and obscure rules that it just plain doesn't work well at all and produces the slowest install/uninstall experience I could ever imagine.

Hey, let's turn this thread around and make it a little more positive.. what would you need for an OS to NOT suck?

MY perfect OS would:

-have a decent command line, though it would never be required by any non-developer.

- run ZFS as the filesystem. It may not be the fastest, but it is so much better than anything else I have ever seen in terms of properly dealing with backups, compression, resiliency, adding storage, mounting, formating, snapshoting, etc.

- have a decent windowing system (not X) that knew how to use a modern graphics card for more than cute effects. Windows 7 is close. Somewhere between OS X and Windows 7 is probably the sweet spot.

- Have decent APIs and frameworks and not drop them and start something completely different every 2 years like Microsoft. Again Apple is clearly ahead here. All of the "Core" APIs come to mind.

- Support for Open Standards like: OpenGL, OpenCL, Java. Unlike MS which seems to purposely not follow open standards (e.g. DirectX, Direct3D) because they can use their monoply tolock people in that way - or they wait till everyone already has settled on something and them come up with something different and call it open (e.g. MAPI)

- On my ideal OS, networking wouldn't suck amd VPNs would be trivial to setup and get working.

- simple and decent security that doesn't try to solve every concievably problem within the realm of possible security issues. Sometimes special needs (military) will need some of their own implementations on top of what the OS provides - making everything rediculously complex for the general population for a few niche markets has screwed all sorts of security things. (Look at how rediculously complex it it is to get a secure web service with Metro/WSIT.)

-All software would need to be signed. The OS vendor could be a signing authority and give out keys for next to nothing - maybe jsut enough to cover the cost of verifying the identities of the devs that ask for keys, but not the ridiculous prices that current signing authorities are charging.Therefore viruses and mal-ware would be more difficult to create without being caught, and keys could be blacklisted to stop malware/viruses in their tracks.

-A requirement of above would mean that the existing hardware mechanism would be used to prevent the execution of data - you can only RUN stuff from RAM that was loaded with data from a verified source of instruction codes; an application or a library. A mechanism for JIT compilation would be there, the JIT compiler would of course need to be signed, but hopeful something could be done to prevent buffer overruns leading to code execution and complete take overs of the machine - the #1 thing that MS security updates patch on a weekly basis.

-All applications would be scriptable and able to trade data easily via a mechanism like AREXX of the Amiga days, or Apple Script (but less sucky)

-keyboard focus would never be stolen by a pop-up while I was typing (Windows sucks for this. Again Mac got it right.)

-I would be able to change ALL user-configurable settings via a GUI. (Linux = fail. An obscure text file in an obscure folder is not a UI.)

-I would be able to discover and run ALL applications from the main UI of the OS without resorting to a command line. (Linux you fail bigtime here)

-The OS would include support of basic technolgies out of the box (browser, email - it was stupid to go after MS because they bundled IE, they don't so many things wrong it was a shame that bundling a browser was a focus when that was obviously what EVERY OS vendor should do)

-Simple access restrictions would be built in. The kind that real people use - like OS X does for filtering iChat, email, web pages, ability to isntall programs, etc - for your kids accounts.

-A single Software Update mechanism would cover ALL installed software. No need for everyone to re-invent the wheel with update checks built in to every program or tons of updating check processes (e.g. Java, apple, MS, etc) launching on startup only to sit and do nothing.

-Rebooting would only be required to reset hardware.

-When a file was in use the OS would tell you what app was using it, not jsut that you can't rename or delete it. I think Snow Leopard has this. MS could do it, but doesn't. When MS tries to do it like they do when installing/uninstalling via MSI, they fail and tell you things that aren't true.

There are some problems that need to be solved outside of the OS that make the user experience with some OS's suck.. like not being able to find drivers. For devices like printers for example there should only be about three or four printer drivers IN THE WORLD - because lets face it, printers all work the same - use some damn firmware people and support a few common standards for the type of printing device you are making (plotter, vector vs. raster based) - of course the OS can suppy the vector to raster translation layer if the printer device is not vector based.

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